What Girls Said 10

The eyes get "duller" - like, there is literally no life in them at all. I believe that there are nutrients in the body that help to maintain pigment, and obviously when you are dead, nutrients are no longer supplied to cells in the body. Also, the cornea that covers the iris and the pupil absorbs the fluids inside the eyeball so it becomes cloudy, giving the impression that the eyes have changed color.

I looked at a cadaver or two, the professor didn't say anything about his/her (I went twice, two different bodies) eyes changing color. He just lifted the eyelid and talked about the eye and its color. To me, it looked the same as if someone were alive.

The paper itself is inconclusive on the subject. It says "If iris color consistently changes postmortem in humans, then this taphonomic artifact must be incorporated into victim identification protocol,"

Check your library... I know there have been some studies on some animals... As to what the details are I could not tell you. I have not studied it personally. I could ask my lab director, she is one of the nations leading eye experts, but this is not her area of research.

A controlled experiment was conducted of postmortem changes to isolated Sus scrofa eyes. The eyes (n = 137) were separated into three groups and each sample was observed for 3-day postmortem at a different temperature. In addition, a Sus scrofa head was obtained to observe postmortem changes of eyes in situ. All isolated blue eyes in the experiment, at room temperature and higher, changed to brown/black within 48 h.

The in situ blue eye, at room temperature, turned brown/black within 72 h. If iris color consistently changes postmortem in humans, then this taphonomic artifact must be incorporated into victim identification protocol, including disaster victim identification software, and autopsy reports to prevent inaccurate victim identification and inappropriate exclusion from the identification process

^That is the context of the quote... The publication was dealing with pigs, and if the trend carries true in humans, then it should be incorporated into forensic science techniques. Being that scientists don't kill off humans to study them dead, it's hard to make that jump... They see these trends in the pig model. I would assume the findings of this research has caused them to ask more serious questions, which may lead to observation of human eyes which have been donated to science.